The treatment of common anemias in infancy and childhood with a cobalt-iron mixture: Including a case report of iron deficiency anemia due to geophagia

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Summary Problems concerned with iron therapy make it somewhat less than satisfactory treatment in children, even in simple iron deficiency anemia. Iron, of course, is of little or no value in anemia associated with infection or chronic disease. Cobalt possesses the property of causing direct stimulation of hemopoiesis. This appears to be of clinical value in improving the response to iron in iron-deficiency anemia. The same property makes it possible to carry on aggressive treatment of those anemias due essentially to the hemopoietic depression which accompanies certain common diseases of children. In a general way, children feel better and gain weight during cobalt-iron medication, and such direct treatment of these anemias is recommended both in iron-deficiency and as an adjunct to specific therapy. Anemia associated with geophagia,“nutritional” anemia, anemia associated with infection, and the anemia associated with prematurity and multiple births responded, in our patients, to cobalt-iron therapy. Cobalt-iron therapy is, in our opinion,a useful, safe therapeutic agent for routine use in the treatment of most of the common anemias of infancy and childhood.